Apollo kidney racket: Doctors to be quizzed; 3 more arrested

Umesh and Nilu told police they had sold their kidneys for Rs 4 lakh and Rs 3 lakh respectively as they needed money for their minor son's leg surgery

Ten doctors are likely to be questioned by the police in connection with the kidney racket busted in Apollo Hospital in New Delhi last week, even as three more persons, including two women, were today nabbed while the kingpin remains at large.

With this, the total numbers of arrests in the case has gone up to eight.

All ten doctors in Apollo Hospital's internal assessment committee for transplant surgeries will be quizzed, a senior police official said.

The committee comprises senior doctors working at the hospital, independent doctors and a government doctor.

The three arrested have been identified as Umesh and Nilu, who are husband and wife residing in Kanpur, and Mamta alias Maumita, wife of one of the five accused arrested last week. All three of them are kidney donors associated with the racket, the official said.

However, efforts to track down the kingpin, Rajukumar Rao, who is suspected to have links with similar rackets in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, have not yet yielded any results.

During interrogation, Umesh and Nilu told police that they had sold their kidneys for Rs 4 lakh and Rs 3 lakh respectively as they were in urgent need of money for their minor son's leg surgery.

They also told police that when they came to know about the actual price in which their kidneys were sold, they felt deceived, an official privy to the investigation said.

The third accused, Mamta, is the one who actually led police to the kidney racket.

On the day it was busted, Mamta was spotted indulging in a heated exchange with her husband, Devashish Moulik, and when the police intervened, on receiving a call regarding the matter, they were stunned by what they heard. Mamta accused Devashish of cheating her with the amount he received after her kidney was sold.

During investigation, it came to light that Devashish had offered his own kidney first but on being declared unfit he convinced his wife to do so, the official said.